Posts by Misoriented

Re: Cause and effect?

Once again, they're confusing correlation with causality. Dr Sitharthan says.”We are finding that people do understand that their excessive porn viewing is impacting on their lives and they want to change," so she clearly believes that porn causes bad things. But isn't it just as possible that people that have other problems, such as depression, unhappy relationships, or trouble at work, will turn to something like porn, drugs, alcohol, sports, reality TV, etc., to make themselves feel better?

Is it the porn causing the destructive behaviors, or the other way around? Maybe instead of judging porn users, these doctors should consider porn usage a possible indicator of a real problem and leave the moral judgements out of it.

The climate change debate is irrelevant

I've never understood why the climate change debate makes any sense. It seems to come down this question: "Have humans polluted the environment so much that it's changing the climate?" But what does it matter if we're affecting the climate or not? Clearly we have polluted the environment to some degree and clearly the climate is changing, because it's always changing, whether we did it or not.

Whether the two are correlated or not is moot. Either way, we should always try to pollute as little as possible. Pollution causes many problems, and possible climate change is only one of them. Why has the climate debate turned into an argument over whether it's ok to continue dumping all the crap we want into the environment? Why is it a political issue instead of an obvious truism? It's never ok to cause more pollution than necessary and we should always be working to reduce our pollution output. Climate change just clouds the real issue. Perhaps an orange-brown hazy kind of cloud.

@LateNightLarry

"Of course Newtie doesn't have a viable way to pay for it..."

Of course not. He has no intention of doing any such thing. This was just some lies he told a group of desperate, out of work people so he can get what he wants. It's been pretty clear every time he opens his mouth that he doesn't care about anything or anybody but himself. Not that that sets him apart from his competition much.

Nothing?

Well, we may not have the final answer, but that doesn't mean we have nothing. We have a question and a possible path we can follow to answer it. Maybe the answer is mundane, such as systematic experimental error, or maybe it's something new an amazing that we never knew existed before. Either way, isn't science about the journey at least as much as the destination?

In this particular case, the journey is even more interesting because the journey is being shared among so many people, including both experts and El Regers. Of course I look forward to hearing what they find, but I also enjoy hearing about the entire process. Or to put it another way: http://xkcd.com/54/

Legitimate protest tactic?

"Members of the loosely knit Anonymous hacking collective condemned the arrests, arguing that denial of services attacks are a legitimate protest tactic, comparable with staging a sit-in or picketing."

Protesters are idiots. They think they're special because they have some idea that's better than everybody else's so they can do anything they want. Usually all they end up doing is making their cause look bad, which drives away any potential support they might have found. Anonymous has taken it to a whole new level, though. They've actually claimed that property destruction is "legitimate".

Here's what happens to a bunch of old people who stage a sit-in to ask for decent medical care (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Vx_Cnw2Wxk). That's right, they get arrested, and they weren't even causing any damage.

While it's true that peaceful picketers don't often get arrested (depending where they are, I suppose), picketers that break things do. If Anonymous wants to picket, they should go whine on Twitter with all the other self-absorbed losers.

Terrorism, cyber or otherwise, is terrorism no matter what your ideals are.

Big fat RICH idiot

Rush Limbaugh isn't an idiot. He's a genius. He's figured how to get rich doing basically nothing. All he does is say whatever spiteful lies he can make up on the spot and people send him piles of money. I wish I were smart enough to find a gig like that.

I don't claim he's a particularly nice person, or that what he's doing is in the best interest of anybody but himself, but I've never understood why people call him an idiot. Sure, he'd be an idiot if he believed everything he says, but there's a reason the only people who believe it are a bunch of stupid trailer trash rednecks. You don't see them getting rich by spouting hate-filled drivel, do you?

I hate to say this, but...

You're right. Not very nice, but right. Global warming is basically a scare tactic. It either exists or it doesn't, and if it does it's caused by humans, the sun, or Girls Gone Wild videos, but really none of that make any difference. Either way we should be doing the same thing: weaning off of oil and reducing pollution.

By the way, the reason we're not doing much about it is not caused by arguing over a billion little details. It's that rich people like to stay rich, so they argue over a billion little details as a delaying tactic. If you own an oil company, it just makes good financial sense to confuse the conversation with trivial questions.

He's so cute when he's sciencing

Isn't it sweet how scientists keep assuming there's a future for the human race? They say things like "we should" and "if we don't do something soon" like it's going to make any difference. I just love their naive optimism.

Open source is not a religion, nor Stallman your Lord and Savior

This is a non-story. This code is available through the Apache license, which allows pretty much anything. It's not the same as GPL. You can argue until you're blue in the face that GPL is better, but Arc90 chose to release their code under an Apache license, and that's their right. Go write your own code and release it however you want. Apple didn't "lift" anything. It actually did more than it was required to by putting a credit to Arc90 in there.

At the same time, Apple needn't be applauded for anything. This was just some developers doing their jobs, which they did completely legally and appropriately.

Open source is just a copyright license, people. It's not a way of life.

That's what the little flame icon is for

It didn't disappear. It just may be able to change direction quickly so the people watching it might lose track of it, but that hasn't happened yet. Stealth vehicles have a small radar signature. They're not invisible. Somebody probably just saw it with a telescope.

They have telescopes, right?

Plus, us sending signals out doesn't make us any more noticeable. I'm sure they can see us. Hell, we'll be able to find Earth-like planets in the next few decades and we're so primitive that we invented digital watches only 40 years ago. It doesn't take a rocket scientist. Er, well you know what I mean.

They can see what chemicals Earth (and the rest of the Sol system) is made of, they can see some of them are sentient-made, so they know if we have any resources they want. If they're looking for places to harvest, they've either not noticed us, which seems unlikely, or there's other places more attractive and as Jason Bloomberg said, they'll get here eventually.

The bright side?

Did I miss something?

The whole point of the article is that they're not fargin' looking at it, right? The people that aren't using the Internet aren't the ones complaining. They're happy enough without it. That's fine, they can do as they please. They do have some valid arguments.

It's "FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski" (seriously, what's up with THAT name?) who thinks everybody should be forwarding lolcats and hanging out on 4-chan. I think Crazy Operations Guy has it right that it's a circular argument. Everybody should be on the Internet so that everybody can be on the Internet. It's the Tautology Club (http://www.xkcd.com/703/)!

This isn't some huge problem. It's just one idiot trying to look important and failing miserably at it.

My sources say no

CJ 1-

Your theory sounded promising, so I showed the promo video to my wife and her friend. They'd never heard about it before and I didn't say anything other than it was released recently and I wanted to know what they thought about it. At first they thought I meant the guy talking about not understanding magic, but after I clarified I meant that silver spinning thing, they were disappointed, but watched the whole thing.

They're not technical by any stretch of the imagination, but they immediately picked up on most of the same things as us commentards.

The good:

It's cute, and looks simple to understand. 10 hour of battery life seems pretty good. They thought the gestures, UI eye candy, and the e-book reader were cool. Maybe it would be nice to read a magazine on the train.

The bad:

It's too big to fit in a purse and carry around. Looks kinda heavy. Where do you put it while you're typing? Who would want to watch a movie while holding it? They also thought it might be nice to Skype with somebody on the couch, until I told them about the lack of camera.

Overall, they weren't impressed, and said they wouldn't want one. They were shocked at the price tag. So, it's a sample size of only two, but my findings show that it doesn't appeal to girls.

Also, I understand from other websites that many women don't like the name due to its...connotations, so there's another strike against it.

Focus, people

Everyone, can we please get some perspective here? It's one meaningless detail out of thousands, in something that's given away for free. It's not worth the time it took to read the article. This has no bearing on real life. Here, I'll give you a real topic to get pissy about: Vegemite, the Aussie conspiracy. Discuss.

Nothing to see, here, citizens. Return to your homes or places of business.

Why is this so important?

What is it about music that gets geeks so worked up? It's just music. It's pointless amusement to waste your free time. I'm all for pointless amusements, but they're not worth getting your panties in a bunch. Go find something useful to be angry about. Here's few ideas to get you started:

That's great and all, but...

What exactly do you suggest we do about it? There's only three options that I see:

1. Send a stupid note

2. Refuse to do business with China

3. Start shooting

#1 is, of course, what they're doing. The result will just be that China gives an equally stupid response and ignores it. #2 isn't going to send a real message, because not enough companies would get behind it unless there is a large embargo imposed. Even then, few countries would get behind it, and it would only serve to piss the Chinese off. It wouldn't make them better people. At the same time would cost a lot of people a lot of money for nothing. #3 is not only a bad idea in a general sense, but it'd be a huge overreaction in this particular case. If you've got a #4, I'd love to hear it.

Interviews suck

Ah, I see you interviewed with Google. I don't get why everybody assumes it's the most perfect place in the world to work. After the fiasco of an interview I had there, there's no way I'd want anywhere near that place.

So many companies forget that interviews are a two-way street. They're trying to find a future employee, the interviewee is trying to find a company they can be happy with. Convincing them they won't be happy there is a great way to scare off the talent, so you can complain that there's nobody qualified.

To be fair, though, if the recruiters had a real skill, they wouldn't be recruiters, now would they?

But wait, there's more!

The worst part isn't that they're making a movie out of Battleship, but that Peter Berg (whoever that is) apparently quit the Dune project to work on it. Huh? Say what you want about remakes, at least Dune is a story. I can't even imagine how you fill two hours with little plastic pieces on a grid.

Here's a little career cheat sheet. If you currently do any of the following jobs, trade it up to work on Battleship: The Movie:

A bit too far?

It always pains me when I have to agree with somebody that does my side of an argument a disservice. As it is with Nusato. Much of what you say makes a lot of sense to me, but the way you say is somewhat less than optimal.

Yes, a lot of IT guys are geeks. I'm a software developer, and I've been known to play some WoW and drink a carbonated beverage on occasion myself. I don't see how these things are any harm to anybody. In fact, I understand when you say that it gives me a connection to my coworkers, who often enjoy the same things.

I'm also unclear why these "scientists" are always trying to figure out how to get more women in IT. What's the motivation there? It is really important that more women SHOULD be in IT? Who cares? It just seems like a pointless exercise. I guess when you have to "publish or die," you'll publish about anything you can think of.

Also, this is just my experience, but the women I've worked with, in general, have not had the same level of technical abilities as men with a similar level of experience. I'm sure that's not true in other cases, but I've just never really been impressed by the female coworkers I've had. They've always seemed to be lacking something. Your mileage will most certainly vary.

However, I'm not sure the anger is really appropriate. You seem to imply ("EARN IT IF YOU WANT IT") that women are demanding to be let into IT even though they haven't earned it. I'm not seeing that. They seem largely uninterested to me, and I agree with you that I'd rather not work with anyone that isn't interested in their job, so it's a win-win. They don't care to work with us, so we don't care to have them. Fine, we can just leave it at that.

@Super Relativity!

It has an awesome name, so it MUST be true!

I can see it all now. Super Einstein and the rest of the Super Relatives, such as Hawking the Evaporator and The God Particle, using their ether-derived powers to save Universe the evil clutches of Quanticaa and her army of Stringites.

Codecs and stuff

I didn't work on it, but I know the guys that did. It's actually 64-bit MP3, not AAC. The way it mitigates bandwidth interruptions is to precache song data, so it can continue playing for a while when you drive through a tunnel, for instance.

As to the quality concerns, apparently I'm supposed to say "We are working to improve sound quality, and it will be included as part of a future update. Stay tuned."

If you have any other questions, I can forward them to the people that would know the answers better than I.

The rest of the story

Ah, if only you could have seen the dev that worked on this. He's been like a man possessed for the past several months. He went away on a honeymoon and all he could think about was getting back and working on version 2.0. It brings a tear the geek's eye.

It's just music

I've never understood why people get so heated about digital music. Yes, yes, I've heard all about the inexcusable attacks on our rights, fair use, copyrights, etc. Clearly, DRM is a sign of the coming apocalypse, and the RIAA eats more babies before breakfast than most people do all day.

I can't gather up enough energy to be indignant about this stuff. It's just not that important. There's a million worse things in the world. Get some perspective and get angry about one of those.